Pool owners frequently enjoy illuminating water within their pools, water in associated features (such as fountains), and areas surrounding their pools and features. Underwater lighting assemblies, typically utilizing light-emitting diodes (LEDs), are especially popular among owners of pools. Many such lighting assemblies may communicate with electronic controllers so as to change colors over time, allowing pool owners to create custom pool-centric “light shows” merely by appropriately programming color-sequence schemes of one or more lighting assemblies.
Because of their popularity, underwater lighting assemblies are marketed by multiple manufacturers. Generally, though, the assemblies are paired with control or automation equipment of the manufacturer, so that a lighting assembly of one manufacturer will not necessarily function when electronically coupled to a controller of another manufacturer. Consequently, distributors of lighting assemblies for pools often carry excess inventory to ensure compatibility with all control equipment of the various manufacturers. Because of space restrictions in service vehicles, moreover, some lighting installers are required to make two trips to a pool location—a first trip to identify the pool owner's control equipment and, after identifying a compatible lighting assembly from its stored inventory, a second trip to install the assembly.
At least one manufacturer has attempted to develop a lighting assembly compatible with multiple generations of its own controllers. The lighting assembly is capable of providing color-related feedback to an installer which may be correlated with other information to determine which control scheme it is emulating. (For example, the installer may perform a test series of on-off cycles with specific timing sequences in an effort to produce a particular result—e.g. solid red illumination, with that result signifying that the lighting assembly is operating in a particular mode.) In practice, however, the test series seem both complex and difficult to perform reliably.
Need thus clearly exists for a more reliable method of determining compatibility of a lighting assembly with particular control equipment already installed (or to-be-installed) for a particular pool. Need also exists for lighting assemblies that are compatible with different lighting programs and automation equipment of different manufacturers. Indeed, one possible solution to these needs is to create a lighting assembly with a mode-selection dial or other switch (e.g. a slide, rotary, or similar type switch) in which an installer, pool owner, or other person can simply change the position of the switch to cause the assembly to operate in a particular mode. However, adding such a switch to a lighting assembly is not necessarily easy to do satisfactorily, as the switch could adversely impact the water resistance of the assembly. This adverse impact could be especially acute for lighting assemblies to be installed within the pool (i.e. underwater).